From the crowd, a man laughed and started making false crying sounds of his own.
“That’s the last of it, sir,” Yardem said. “We’ve started boarding it up. Making it secure.”
“Thank you,” Marcus said.
“Yes, sir.”
The Kurtadam man was sitting on his mattress with his head in his hands. Sobs racked his body. Marcus squatted down beside him.
“All right,” Marcus said. “So here’s what happens next. You’re going to be angry and you’re going to want to get back at us. Me, the bank, anyone. It’ll take a week, maybe more, to get past the worst of that, but in the meantime, you won’t be thinking things through. You’re going to tell yourself that burning the house is the right thing. If you can’t have it, no one can. Like that. Are you listening?”
“Eat shit,” the man said between sobs.
“I’ll take that for yes. So I’m going to leave some of my people here. They’ll be in the house and the street just to see to it that nothing interesting happens. If anyone comes into the house, they’ll kill them. If anyone tries to damage the house from the outside, they’ll hurt them badly. So don’t let’s dance that, all right?”
Maybe it was the gentleness of the threat, but the Kurtadam man stopped long enough to nod. That was a good sign, at least.
“I’m going to make you an offer now,” Marcus said. “I don’t mean any offense by it. It’s not the bank doing it, it’s me. You’ve got all this and no place for it. Your things are going to rot in the street. Won’t do you any good. I’ll give you thirty weight in silver for the whole thing, and you can walk away. Start over.”
The tears were falling from the man’s eyes, beading on his oily, otter-fine fur like dewdrops.
“Worth more,” he choked.
“Not lying on the street, it’s not,” Marcus said.
“I need my puppets. It’s how I live.”
“You can keep three of the puppets, then. Same price.”
Despair washed over the man’s expression as he looked at his chests and clothes, a great plaster vase with cut flowers wilting in it. The crowd looked on in amusement or false sympathy.
“I was going to pay,” the man said softly.
“You weren’t,” Marcus said. “And that’s all past now. Take your dolls and your silver, and go try again, all right?”
The man nodded. More tears. Marcus pressed a wallet with the silver into the man’s hand.
“All right, let’s load all this up except whichever three puppets he wants, and take it back to the warehouse.”
“Yes, sir,” Yardem said. “And after?”
“Bathhouse. I’m feeling a touch soiled.”
The summer in Porte Oliva was a bandit. It hid behind the soft sea breeze and the long, comfortable evenings. It spoke in the friendly and reassuring tones of surf and birdcall. If at midday the sun felt like a hand pushing down against his shoulder, Marcus could still call it companionable. The attack would come—blazing days and sweat-filled nights. The Kurtadam would shave themselves back almost to stubble. The Firstblood and the Cinnae would abandon modesty in favor of comfort. The business of the day would stop just after midday, the city falling into fevered dreams until evening when the summer sun lost some of its violence.
The attack wasn’t there yet. The spring was still lulling them all into lowering their guard. But it would come.
Cithrin was over two weeks gone, and likely on the water between Sara-sur-Mar and Carse. The days without her had been made from the same cloth as those with—payments to deliver, the strongbox to watch, the payments to retrieve. Now and then, a client or partner would need a few swords to walk with someone or something. Now that Pyk’s role was uncontested, she seemed to calm a bit, but she still generated a dozen minor tasks that had to be done and complained at the money it cost to accomplish them. So in a sense, nothing had changed, and in a sense it all had.
“I’m going to go after her,” Marcus said.
Yardem sat forward, drinking his beer carefully. His silence was thoughtful and disapproving. Marcus leaned forward over the rough plank table. It wasn’t their customary taproom. Three young Jasuru boys, their scales bright as green-snakes, played drums in the yard, the complex rhythms making the air richer. Marcus took his bowl of beef and snow peas, looked at it, and put it down again.
“I was thinking about coming from Vanai when Cithrin was passing herself as a boy,” he said.
Yardem nodded.
“You’d be in a dress then, sir?”
“I could go in carter’s clothes. Or as a merchant. It isn’t as if I’d need to announce myself. Just ride in, stay quiet, and when she’s ready to come back I can travel with her then.”
“Why?”
“Not much point in staying hidden when I’m heading away, is there?”
“I mean why would you go after her, sir? What’s the advantage?”
“I’d think that was obvious. Keep her safe.”
Yardem sighed.
“What?” Marcus said. “Go ahead. You know you want to say it. Tell me she’s in no danger, and that Corisen Mout and Barth can keep her as safe as anyone. She’s heading toward a war. A real one, not one of the little shell games like who runs Maccia. She doesn’t understand how that kind of violence can spread. And you know that’s true.”
“If you think three blades would make her safe where two won’t, why not send someone else, sir? Enen’s been to Carse.”
Yardem’s dark eyes met his. Yardem’s ironic subservience had become such a habit over the years that Marcus sometimes forgot the hardness that could take the Tralgu’s features. In moments like this, it was easy to believe that the Tralgu had been bred for the hunt and the kill as well as a deadly kind of loyalty. Marcus silently hefted a few arguments, but under Yardem’s implacable gaze, they all seemed like felling a tree with a toenail knife.
“You want her to be in trouble, sir, but she isn’t.”
Marcus’s impatience shifted. He felt his own gaze cool.
“Meaning what?”
Yardem flicked an ear, the rings jingling, and turned back to his mug. When he started to lift it, Marcus put his palm over its mouth and pressed it back down to the table.
“Asked you a question.”
Yardem let go of the beer.
“After Ellis, sir, you looked for revenge.”
“I looked for justice.”
“If you say so,” Yardem said, refusing to be turned. “I was with you for that. Not like we are now, but I was there. I saw it happen. You didn’t only kill Springmere. You planned it, you built it. You made sure that he could see his death coming, understood it, and couldn’t do anything to stop it. And when he was dead, you thought it would be better. Not fixed. You’re not stupid, but you thought that… justice… would redeem something. Only it didn’t.”
“I am just certain you have an argument in this somewhere,” Marcus said. “Because I just know you aren’t hauling Alys and Merian out of their graves to score cheap points.”
“I’m not, sir,” Yardem said. There was nothing like apology in his voice. “I’m saying you didn’t only kill Springmere because he needed to die. You were looking for redemption.”
“More of your religious—”
“And you were looking to Cithrin for the same,” Yardem said, refusing to be silenced. “She was a girl and she was at the mercy of a merciless world. We helped her. Hatred didn’t bring you peace, and somewhere in your soul, you thought that love would. And here we are, Cithrin bel Sarcour saved, only you still don’t have the redemption you wanted. So you’re trying to tell yourself and everyone else that she still needs saving when she doesn’t. She’s fine, sir.”